Look out for thugs in pinstripe suits

Courier columnist Dan Mackay gives his waggish take on life

"LIKE sacrificial lambs on the altar of light entertainment" was how one irate critic described the controversial Channel 4 series

Benefits Street.

"A gross misrepresentation of the working class", another insisted. There were even claims the new television series was "a ploy to outlaw the poor".

Already thousands of people have petitioned Love Productions, the company contracted to make the series, demanding a right of reply.

So, what’s all the fuss about?

Objectors claim Benefits Street, a fly-on-the-wall reality series, does not present a fair picture of one of Britain’s most benefit-dependent streets. Indeed they claim the series "sensationalises" those depicted as scroungers.

Yet Love Productions insists it was up front with the residents of James Turner Street, in Birmingham’s Windsor Green district, where most tenants in its 99 houses are on some form of benefit or other. The programme has certainly opened a can of worms exposing 21st century Britain’s age of entitlement.

But does it provide a fair and balanced account of the lives of those on welfare benefits?

It seems the answer to that depends on your personal standpoint. Those of a Left wing persuasion might characterise Benefits Street as cheap, shoddy "poverty porn" that exposes the underbelly of a non-representative group of individuals which results in an entire working class being tarred by the same brush.

Right wing Tory-types would argue the programme gives further ammunition to press ahead with Work and Pension Secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s ongoing welfare reforms.

I’m inclined to think, myself, that the last people to advise working class people struggling to keep their heads above water are multi-millionaire Tory cabinet ministers.

Yet the old Etonian public school toff-types never miss an opportunity to bash those at the bottom of the heap. Were the childhood experiences of the English independent boarding school system so characterised by sensory deprivation that even in late adulthood the well-mannered thugs in pin-stripe suits cannot restrain themselves from putting the boot in?

Here, I must admit, I had somehow assumed the Channel 4 series was actually going to expose — albeit tongue-in-cheek — the obscene amounts of money supporting the few residents of another benefits street.

Let’s face it, the Windsor family and their profligate offspring must surely qualify for a fair old rake of government hand-outs. So while Chancellor George Osborne, in this year of "hard truths", is determined to crack on with a further round of public spending cutbacks to the tune of £25 billion, including £12 billion from benefits, he has no plans to curtail the newly introduced Sovereign Support Grant.

Not only that, it seems Lizzie Windsor and Co — for the first time in 250 years, thanks to the Lib Dem/Tory 2010 Spending Review — will, once again, get her hands on revenue from the Crown Estate and will no longer be reliant on the previous Civil List, established back in 1760,

With a 15 per cent slice of the Crown Estate’s annual profit of £240 million, it seems the Windsors are all set for a massive bonus — somewhere in the order of £28 million a year more dosh!

It seems we can always rely on our so-called Westminster representatives to do the right thing. These the very same bods who are in line for an 11 per cent pay increase.

And these, the very same inept bods, who are either unwilling or unable to do anything about the continuing bonus culture that corrupts the British banking system. The very system that brought this country to its knees in the first instance.

Not the residents in James Turner Street but the unrestrained workers on Canary Wharf whose lust for their share of corporate greed drove them to take unfettered risks with the national housekeeping.

So despite the fact that, allegedly, we "are all in this together", it seems their reality is not our reality.

And, by the way, despite Prime Minister David Cameron’s promises to the contrary, not one of those bankers has been brought to book in any British criminal court of law.

All of which brings me, nicely, to Wonga.com!

I know I should have gone to Specsavers but did my eyes deceive me the other day watching football highlights on the telly?

Despite all their near catastrophic financial woes Hearts Football Club — aka the Jam Tarts — continue perilously in administration following the collapsed reign of its previous major shareholder Vladimir Romanov and have now secured sponsorship from the payday loan company which specialises in short-term, high-cost credit.

Wonga.com has been widely criticised for its exorbitant interest rates which can equate to an annual percentage rate (APR) of up to 5000 per cent. Foremost amongst their many critics is Justin Welby, the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, who last year made it his personal mission to see Wonga out of business.

Welby, a strong supporter of low-cost credit unions, later hit the roof when it transpired that the Church’s pension fund invested in venture capitalists who specialised in early stage company start-ups which had supported Wonga. Much overturning of the money lenders tables in the temple methinks!

Maybe the luckless Nick Clegg was right. Let’s start in the mansions — he suggested — and make sure they are paying their fair whack. Let’s start at the top. Not the bottom. Not the residents in James Turner Street. Not the sacrificial lambs.

Beware the well-mannered thugs in pin-stripe suits!

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